L to R (top row): Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Nirupama DuttMusharraf Ali Farooqi, Khairani Barokka, Steve Bradbury, Nirupama Dutt, Janet Hong, Bill Johnston, Jack Jung, Jayasree Kalathil;
L to R (bottom row): Takami Nieda, N Kalyan Raman, Daisy Rockwell, Julia Sanches, Arunava Sinha, Madeleine Stratford, Manjushree Thapa, Rachel Willson-Broyles]
September 6, 2023–We are excited to introduce the 2024 Emerging Translator Mentorship Program mentors! The ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program is designed to establish and facilitate a close working relationship between an experienced translator and an emerging translator on a project selected by the emerging translator. This program was founded by former ALTA Board member Allison M. Charette. The applications for the 2024 mentorship program cycle are open on our Submittable page until November 30, 2023 at 11:59pm PT.
The following 17 mentorships are available in 2024:
- Bangla, with mentor Arunava Sinha
- Catalan, with mentor Julia Sanches
- Hindi, with mentor Daisy Rockwell
- Japanese, with mentor Takami Nieda
- Korean poetry, with mentor Jack Jung
- Korean prose, with mentor Janet Hong
- Malayalam, with mentor Jayasree Kalathil
- Nepali, with mentor Manjushree Thapa
- Non-language-specific, non-genre-specific BIPOC mentorship, with mentor Kareem James Abu-Zeid (open to translators who identify as Black, Indigenous and/or a Person of Color)
- Panjabi, with Nirupama Dutt
- Poetry from a South Asian language, with mentor Khairani Barokka
- Polish, with mentor Bill Johnston
- Literature from Québec, with mentor Madeleine Stratford
- Swedish, with mentor Rachel Willson-Broyles
- Literature from Taiwan, with mentor Steve Bradbury
- Tamil, with mentor N Kalyan Raman
- Urdu, with mentor Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Learn more about the mentors below:
Kareem James Abu-Zeid, PhD, is an Egyptian-American translator of poets and novelists from across the Arab world who translates from Arabic, French, and German. He has received the Sarah Maguire Prize for poetry in translation, an NEA translation grant, PEN Center USA’s translation prize, Poetry Magazine‘s translation prize, a Fulbright research fellowship, and translation residencies from the Lannan Foundation and the Banff International Center for the Arts, among other honors. He is also the author of the book The Poetics of Adonis and Yves Bonnefoy: Poetry as Spiritual Practice. The online hub for his work is http://www.kareemjamesabuzeid.com.
Image description: Kareem, a Middle Eastern man with long curly black hair, is standing inside against a grey backdrop and smiling. He is wearing a white button-down shirt with the top button open, and a dark blue blazer.
Musharraf Ali Farooqi is an author, novelist, and translator. He is an international authority on Urdu classical literature, and the founder of the Library of Urdu Classics (urduclassics.com) and Urdu Thesaurus (urduthesaurus.com). He is also the founder of Storykit, a program that uses stories to educate children. Web: micromaf.com.
Image description: Musharraf Ali Farooqi is a man who is sitting in a restaurant. He has grey hair and wears a white shirt and a black jacket. He is smiling at the camera.
Khairani Barokka is Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT), and a writer and artist from Jakarta, with around twenty-five years of professional translation experience. Okka’s work has been presented widely internationally, and centers disability justice as anticolonial praxis, and access as translation. Among her honors, she has been MPT’s Inaugural Poet-in-Residence, a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, an Artforum Must-See, and Associate Artist at the UK’s National Centre for Writing. Okka’s books include Indigenous Species, Rope, and Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (as co-editor). Her latest is Ultimatum Orangutan, shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize.
Image description: A black and white photo of an Indonesian woman in profile, with short hair, a visible silver earring and dark dress. Picture credit: Matthew Thompson.
Steve Bradbury translates the work of contemporary Chinese-language poets. His last book-length publication, Raised by Wolves: Poems and Conversations (Deep Vellum), won the 2020 PEN America Poetry in Translation Award.
Image description: In this black and white photo, Steve is looking to the side with a big smile. He wears a banded straw hat and a shirt with palm trees on it.
Nirupama Dutt is a well-known poet, journalist, columnist, and translator, writing in both English and Punjabi, as well as occasionally in Hindi. She received the Punjabi Akademi Award for her anthology of poems, Ik Nadi Sanwali Jahi (A Stream Somewhat Dark). Her poetry anthologies in English and Hindi are: The Black Woman and Buri Auraton Ki Fehrist Se. Her poems have been translated into many languages and included in several anthologies. Her books include Stories of the Soil (translation of 41 stories from Punjabi, published by Penguin) and Poet of the Revolution (translation of the memoirs and poetry of Lal Singh Dil, published by Penguin).
Image description: This brown woman from Chandigarh wearing the Punjabi suit with a cotton dupatta looks on with a half smile, wondering what life is going to bring next.
Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. She received the TA First Translation Prize and the LTI Korea Translation Award for her translation of Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale. She’s a two-time winner of the Harvey Award for Best International Book for her translations of Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Grass and Yeong-shin Ma’s Moms. Recent translations include Kwon Yeo-sun’s Lemon and Ha Seong-nan’s Bluebeard’s First Wife.
Image description: This photograph shows a Korean woman with dark shoulder-length hair and red highlights, wearing a black sweater. She is looking to the side away from the camera against a light gray background. Photo credit: Laura Pak.
Bill Johnston received the 2019 National Translation Award in Poetry for his rendering of Adam Mickiewicz’s epic narrative poem in rhyming couplets Pan Tadeusz (Archipelago Books, 2018). He translates from Polish and French; his recent translations have included work by Julia Fiedorczuk, Kaja Malanowska, Jean Giono, and Jeanne Benameur. His numerous honors include the PEN Translation Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches literary translation at Indiana University, where he is currently serving as Michael Henry Heim Chair in Central and East European Letters.
Image description: Bill, a man with close-cut graying hair and beard and wearing thin-framed glasses, is dressed in a gray rain jacket and scarf as he stands on a windswept beach on an overcast day. He is looking at the camera and smiling faintly.
Jack Jung studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Truman Capote Fellow. He is a co-translator of Yi Sang: Selected Works (Wave Books 2020), the winner of 2021 MLA Prize for a Translation of Literary Work. His poetry and translations have been published in Washington Square Review, Bennington Review, BOMB Magazine, The Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, Chicago Review, Guernica Magazine, The Margins, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. He teaches at Davidson College.
Image description: Jack, an Asian man with short black hair leans back against a wall with a graffiti portrait of Korean poet Yi Sang. Jack is wearing a red t-shirt with a blue linen shirt over it. Yi Sang is painted in black and white.
Dr. Jayasree Kalathil is the author of The Sackclothman, a children’s book which has been translated into Malayalam, Telugu, and Hindi. She has received the V. Abdulla Memorial Translation Prize (for Sheela Tomy’s Valli), the JCB Prize for Literature (for S. Hareesh’s Moustache), and the Crossword Books Jury Award for Indian Language Translation (for N Prabhakaran’s Diary of a Malayali Madman). She has published widely in the area of anti-racism and human rights in mental health, including Recovery and Resilience: African, African-Caribbean and South Asian Women’s Stories and the co-authored textbook Values and Ethics in Mental Health. Originally from Kerala, India, Jayasree lives in the New Forest in England.
Image description: Jayasree, a South Asian woman, is leaning against a wall and smiling at the camera. She has long hair, dangly earrings and a nose stud on the left side of her nose. She is wearing a maroon jersey dress. Photo credit: Adley Siddiqi
Takami Nieda is a two-time winner of the Freeman Book Award for YA Literature for her translations of GO by Kazuki Kaneshiro and The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil. She is currently working on Travelers of a Hundred Years by Lee Hoesung, forthcoming from University of Michigan Press in 2024. Nieda teaches writing and multilingual translation at Seattle Central College.
Image description: Takami, an Asian woman with short brown-black hair, stands with her arms folded, against a black background. She wears tortoise-shell glasses and a brown v-neck sweater over a pink-pinstriped blouse. Photo credit: Adriane Mathiowetz.
N Kalyan Raman is a translator of Tamil fiction and poetry into English. He has published 15 works of translated fiction and over 200 poems by leading Tamil poets in journals and anthologies in India and abroad. The Story of a Goat, his translation of Perumal Murugan’s Poonachi, was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2020. He was recipient of the Translation Prize (English) for 2022 given by the Central Academy of Letters in India. He lives and works in the port city of Chennai in south India.
Image description: Kalyan is a brown-complexioned Indian man in his late sixties with closely cropped grey hair and a grey moustache. He is outdoors in the sunlight, wearing a light blue T-shirt with a collar, looking calmly at the camera with his black eyes.
Daisy Rockwell is an artist and translator living in Vermont, USA. She has translated numerous twentieth century classics into English from Hindi and Urdu, including Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas, and Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard. Her translation of Krishna Sobti’s A Gujarat Here, a Gujarat There was awarded the 2019 Aldo and Jeannie Scaglioni for Translation of a Literary Work, and her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand was awarded the 2022 International Booker Prize as well as the 2022 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
Image description: Daisy Rockwell, a woman with blonde hair and bangs, is shown from the neck up in front of two bookcases full of books. She is wearing glittering gold cat’s eye glasses and a black turtleneck and smiles faintly.
Julia Sanches translates literature from Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan into English. Her recent translations include Boulder by Eva Baltasar, which was shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize.
Image description: This black-and-white photograph shows a light-skinned woman with shoulder-length hair, tortoise-shell glasses, and bronze cicada earrings. She is wearing a dark-colored shirt and a bag hanging off her shoulder. Her eyes are trained directly at the camera as the sun casts the shadow of her glasses across her cheeks and of her chin across her neck.
Arunava Sinha is a literary translator, working from Bengali into English and English into Bengali. More than 80 of his translations have been published so far across India, the UK, the US, and Australia. He teaches in the Creative Writing Department of Ashoka University in India, and is Co-Director, Ashoka Centre for Translation. He lives and works in New Delhi.
Image description: Arunava, an Indian man, is standing outdoors. He is wearing glasses and a white shirt.
Madeleine Stratford is a poet, a literary translator and an Associate Professor at Université du Québec en Outaouais. Her translations have been shortlisted for the Governor General award in Canada (2016, 2019, 2021), as well as for the Young Readers Kirkus Prize in the US (2017). Her recent work includes Québécois classic Swallowed [L’Avalée des avalés] by Réjean Ducharme (Véhicule Press, 2020) and Canadian bestseller Chasseurs d’étoiles [Hunting by Stars] by Métis writer Cherie Dimaline (Boréal, 2023).
Image description: Madeleine, a white woman with light chestnut brown hair cut in a short bob, stands in front of a white background printed with the phrase “Créer du lien” in white or black. She wears a black sweater dress with an oversized collar. She has blue eyes and freckles, wears red lipstick, and is smiling at the camera.
Manjushree Thapa is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction centered on contemporary Nepal. She has also translated Nepali literature into English, most recently Indra Bahadur Rai’s modern classic There’s a Carnival Today, set in Darjeeling’s separatist movement. She translated the works of 49 Nepali poets and writers in The Country is Yours, and has guest edited collections of Nepali literature in translation for Manoa, La.Lit, and Words Without Borders. She has a Master’s in English from the University of Washington, where she was a Fulbright fellow, and a DLitt (Honorary) from Western University. She is currently working on a novel.
Image description: A photograph of Manjushree Thapa, a South Asian woman with medium-length brown hair and horn-rimmed eyeglasses, shown smiling, wearing a lavender and black dress, and standing with her arms crossed in front of a concrete wall.
Rachel Willson-Broyles is a freelance translator specializing in translating contemporary literature from Swedish to English. She received her BA in Scandinavian Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2002 and her PhD in Scandinavian Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013. Recent translations include Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius and Blaze Me a Sun by Christoffer Carlsson. Rachel lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Image description: Rachel, a white woman with curly brown hair worn up in a bun, leans against a wall in a studio. She wears red glasses and smiles at the camera. She wears a black blazer over a black shirt with white polka dots.
View our webpage for more information, our submissions portal to submit, and find answers to common questions at the mentorship FAQ. We are proud of our former mentees’ many accomplishments; follow this link to check them out!
These mentorships are offered by ALTA in partnership with the BIPOC Literary Translators Caucus, Institut Ramon Llull, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, the Polish Cultural Institute New York, the SALT Project, the Swedish Arts Council, the Taiwan Academy of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles, Québec Édition, and the Yanai Initiative.
Applications must be submitted online through our submission platform by November 30, 2023 at 11:59pm PT!
[Image description: A composite image of the logos of the funders of the 2024 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program.]